HighQ: What we did in 2022 so you can be your best in 2023

HighQ had a year packed with change, with a through line of improving ease of use and having greater reliability. Various upgrades served to boost speed and efficiency without sacrificing security, as clients could better fine tune control of their end users.

As Thomson Reuters Director of Product Management Andrew Neill said in a recent webcast, the priority for HighQ in 2022 wasn’t so much introducing new features to dazzle users; it was far more about “making this system the best system to operate, with the most reliability, capability, and skill to support your business. You need to be able to trust and use our system to do whatever you need it to do. So, a huge amount of our resources are going into performance improvements, reliability improvements, and scalability improvements.”

What happened in 2022?

Second quarter: Upgrading the experience

One substantial change in the second quarter was an across-the-board upgrade of HighQ — the culmination of nine months of analyzing and responding to user feedback. The focus was on improving use cases, particularly contract and transaction management. Among the enhancements were:

• More customized entry portals. HighQ system dashboards became more customizable: clients now create landing pages targeted to particular groups — say, for customers or employees — designing a specific visual experience for each.
• Clearer transactional processes. Users can more easily review all pertinent information, regardless of the task they’re doing. “You’re always seeing the same system actions, wherever you are in the platform,” Neill said.
• Greater accountability. HighQ’s e-signatures dashboard was built out for greater process transparency. Take contracts, for example: a user now sees, via their HighQ dashboard, where things stand with a particular contract — who’s signed it and when, and who still needs to.
• More granular file permissions. System managers got more nuanced control over who can do what in terms of file access: easily hiving user groups into those only approved to view files, those approved to upload and edit them, and those allowed to delete files.

Third quarter: Speed and safety

The third quarter for HighQ was devoted to enhancing the system’s speed and efficiency while also improving security in terms of user access to information. Among the changes were:

• Greater use of process automation. Several process improvements were enacted, including extending the schedule trigger so that users could now schedule something as far as 10 years into the future. Users also gained the ability to inherit folder permissions and got greater visibility into the state of current workflow.
• Incorporating artificial intelligence (AI). In August, select customers began to use the AI system Document Intelligence within HighQ, a rollout that continues to expand today.
• Better email integration. HighQ can now react to multi-line text columns, such as email addresses, making it easier for users to send email notifications.

Users had clamored for stronger differentiations as to whom, whether in a company or at a client’s, can review documents in HighQ. The more complex a system grows, the greater the number of administrators needed. But do all of them need system-wide access? The more admins with system-wide access privileges, the greater the risk that, for example, a confidential document gets exposed to those who shouldn’t be able to access it.

In response, HighQ developed more granular permissions — in part by creating two new system administrator roles:

• System user administration. An administrator who configures users in groups and can reset passwords, etc., but cannot change system configurations or remove site content.
• System configuration administration. An administrator able to change site settings — images, brands, etc. — but unable to access user functions.